Follow-Up on Message and Responses to Abortion Topic

There have been a few comments on our Journey Church Facebook page in response to my posting a link to my previous blog. They seem to reflect the divide in this country regarding this subject - and, it seems that the greatest division is about when a baby in the womb has become a real person.

I thought it might be interesting to post some remarks that were made a few years ago by Dr. Jerome Lejeune, who until his death in 1994, was one of the leading geneticists and pediatricians in the world. It was his remarkable work that uncovered the mystery behind children born with Down's Syndrome - discovering that the abnorality is caused by an extra copy of the 21st chromosome in the child. Here is the link to his remarks before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the question, "When Does Human Life Begin?" http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/lej/lej_02whenlifebegins.html

In speaking before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommitee about the development of a child in the womb, he states, “Life has a very long history but each individual has a very neat beginning, the moment of its conception. The material link is the molecular thread of DNA. In each reproductive cell, this ribbon roughly one meter long is cut into pieces twenty-three, or chromosomes. As soon as the twenty-three paternally derived chromosomes are united through fertilization to the twenty-three maternal ones, the full genetic meeting necessary to express all the inborn qualities of the new individual is gathered and personal constitution takes place. At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb-length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there, hands, feet, head, organs, brain. In the fourth week, there is consciousness. All are in place. His heart has been beating for a month by the second month. His fingerprints can be detected, his heart is beating 150 to 170 beats a minute to accept the fact,” he writes, “that after fertilization has taken place, a new human being has come into being, is no longer a matter of taste or opinion.”

And, we may choose to argue about whether we believe that the baby aborted was a person or simply a fetus but the overwhelming evidence of those who chose abortion suggests that they know that it was a child whose life was taken. I encourage your reading of the two articles below that reflect the impact of abortion on individuals in Japan.

In Japan, a Ritual of Mourning for Abortions

By SHERYL WuDUNN

Published: January 25, 1996

KAMAKURA, Japan— Winding her way among thousands of tiny statuettes in an ancient hillside temple, Yuka Sugimoto finds the one she is seeking and lingers in contemplation of the secret, haunting act that brought her here. Many Buddhists come to temples to pray for good health, a new husband or a pile of money, but not Miss Sugimoto. Every month she comes to this temple in the ancient Japanese capital of Kamakura to make amends with the fetus that she aborted nearly two years ago as an unmarried student.

THE TRAGEDY OF JAPANESE 'WATER BABIES'

Japan: Land of manga, gold-plated Buddhas, robotic romance … and Rachel weeping for her children? I could have sworn that was from another religion and a foreigner’s book. But that was before I discovered the culture of “mizuko kuyo,” their ritual of mourning and apologizing for abortion.

From a sea of shrines and graveyards dotting the islands, some of the busiest are dedicated to Japan’s dead babies. Ceremonies and attendance is consistent at these spots, even with a less religious culture than earlier generations. Of all those infants, the vast majority lost their lives by abortion, at least since the 1970s, when rates peaked. But the graveyard scene is bustling, thanks to abortion and its fallout in Japan.